Software above the level of a single device

"I made "software above the level of a single device" one of the key principles in my Web 2.0 talks. Nonetheless it seems to me that this is still one of the principles that is not properly understood, or is understood only in the most obvious sense.

And that obvious sense is this: by definition, every web application is software above the level of a single device. At minimum, these applications use a client on a local computer and one or more server computers. In the case of applications like Google, the server end may consist of hundreds of thousands of machines, and, of course, the data held on those servers is gathered from literally hundreds of millions of other computers. So clearly, this is software above the level of a single device." (Tim O'Reilly 2007) 

A long time ago, I had the Google Mobile App. Then I just kind of gave up on it and deleted it. It didn't do anything particularly useful, and was no better than launching Mobile Safari for searches. The voice feature was nice, but launching the app and trying to use the command usually took longer than launching the browser and just searching manually. But the brand new Google Search App is as huge improvement over that, and I may actually keep it. Below will be a video link to show your whats different about Google Search App. 

Google Search App is an application using the power of Google Search Engine Server, to revolutionize users from searching information using other than typing text from keypad.

Now I will explain the reasons why Google Search have became uniquely different from the mobile browsers and how they have marvelously link the app and their server on searching information or whatever you want on the web. Below I will be using some of the screenshots from the iPhone and explain how to use it.

Having the awesome voice searching engine by Google Search apps is totally great, which is pretty accurate and instant search from its search engine. Below will be a video link on how Voice Search works and screenshot from the iPhone. 

Another awesome features is the Google Goggles which have an ability something like the text recognition where you can take a photo using your iPhone camera of a book or a painting, Google Goggles will detect the words or text on the photo taken and have a search on their great search engine. For more clearer upstanding on how it works please watch the video link below, and I have also taken a screenshot of how Google Goggles look like on iPhone. 

Google search engine on a laptop or desktop might be one of the most fantastic engine ever. But having it on the mobile smartphone like iPhone, which have totally revolutionize the way search engine works. No longer need to type out the text to search for what you want, just need to read for your mouth or taking photos of what you seeing. The interactive user experience is slowly evolving into our daily lifestyle, maybe in the near future "Check In" is no longer needed to press on buttons but just activating it with voice command.... 

Reference

Quote from Tim O'Reilly Article

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/software-above-the-level-of-a.html 

Wiki informations 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

Google Search at iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/google-search/id284815942?mt=8#

Data is the next 'Intel Inside'

Every day, consumers from all over the globe are uploading, transferring and downloading valuable data online. Web 2.0 has become a vastly growing global resource for people to connect with each other and gain instantaneous information. 

The following might be some of the best examples of what everyone in the world who are using the power data in Web 2.0 environment: 

Microsoft’s collaboration software, Sharepoint, which in its early days was a simple document sharing tool, is now chockfull of social networking features, including tools to support blogs, wikis, and a robust interactive community. It’s free version, Windows SharePoint Services, which comes with Windows, you can do BI, reporting, and integration, and it’s an entire application development platform as well. 

Google Docs can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more. They have successfully creating wonders in the generation of mobile smartphone and tablets industry too, allowing google users to work and collaborate on mobile seamlessly. If you want to work and share docs within the team, now every team members can view and make changes at the same time. There’s an on-screen chat window for spreadsheets, and document revisions show you exactly who changed what, and when. We can also add in more details or comments.

Users love the tool because it consolidates information from many applications, and loves it because it’s a single technology they can use for many purposes.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) keeps growing and growing and growing, experts and analysts say, with many large companies adding SaaS components to on-premise software installations. Salesforce.com, considered the bellwether of the SaaS industry, reported record revenue of $305 million, up 23% from 2008, in its fiscal first quarter ended April 30, 2009. SaaS is winning favor because it’s often 20% cheaper than managing a non-premise application. SaaS is on track to be the dominant model for software by 2012. There are still lots of security issues, but the economics are definitely there. The other sweeping advantage is the flexibility that companies gain by rapidly adding new functionality. The paradigm shift is where you can go acquire a piece of what you need and assemble that into the software that you already own.

The Next Big Thing, Cloud Computing. 

It’s only a matter of time before cloud computing gains its place on center stage. Sure, there are still security and reliability issues, but what aspect of IT doesn’t have that today?

Cloud services, offered by tech giants such as

• Amazon
• Microsoft
• Salesforce

They are making it relatively painless and certainly cheaper for a company to add infrastructure than if they were doing it themselves. They also gain best practices from the cloud provider. If the company decides it doesn’t need that extra infrastructure in six or 12 months, it simply cancels the service. That’s why enterprise customers are now doing cloud computing pilots, whereas a year ago, CIOs were turning up their noses at the concept.

One of the famous service that everyone is using right now is Dropbox. 

Its one the most amazing thing for users, as they can upload whatever files they wanted in the cloud and then retrieving it in almost every mobile devices. Watch the video below understand more about the goodness of Dropbox. 

Next will be the Microblogging. 

Using social networking sites to broadcast news and other information about your company is a pretty darn cheap and widely acceptable way to engage with your community of partners, customers, and prospects. From the IT management side, there’s not much to do and why not educate your executives about the social Web?

“It’s virtually free, except for the labor involved, and you have unprecedented reach into decision makers,” says Jonathan Jaffe, founder of its-your-internet.com, a New York City-based company that advises organizations on technologies for online marketing.

This will change because as more people use Twitter these individuals will get bombarded, but now there’s a lot of accessibility. IT people are also broadcasting technical problems to the social Web and sometimes getting answers within an hour or two from vendors and experts.

Internal social networking using by the companies are best off starting internally when experimenting with social media. For one thing, it’s better to make a mistake inside the company than with customers and influencers. For another, employees increasingly prefer to communicate via social media, and now, enterprise social networking tools incorporate security and other requirements that big companies seek. Leading Web-based applications for internal blogs, micro-blogging, mashups, and wikis include Confluence by Atlassian, Socialtext, and the open-source MediaWiki. Such tools are often available at a fraction of the cost of traditional collaboration products (from companies such as Microsoft and IBM).

In Conclusion, IT pros should stay close to the people who hold the purse when they are looking into new applications and projects, as always.

“From my point of view, having developed Web applications for the past 13 years, a key issue I’ve seen everywhere is the communication gap between the financial controller (FC) of the company and the development team members. So my advice is don’t focus too much on the buzzwords. Get in synch with your FC and look at your projects from a business point of view.” Dan Bridge, a UK-based developer

Reference

Sharepoint information: 

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx 
Google Docs screenshots on an iPad and information: 
docs.google.com/
Youtube video of "What is DropBox?": 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFb0NaeRmdg
Cloud Services: 
Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
Salesforce: http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/
Wikipedia information: 
SaaS : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service
Cloud Computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
Microblogging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging
Dropbox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(service)
Quote by Jonathan Jaffe :
http://www.its-your-internet.com/index.php/about-us/founder-jonathan-jaffe.html